NFA West Student Creates Podcasts During Internship

As part of the internship program at Newburgh Free Academy, West Campus, 10th grader, Jordan Patterson, meets with Dr. David Gallagher, Associate Professor of Education at Mount Saint Mary College to develop podcasts. The first few meetings consisted of critically listening to various podcasts, taking note of structure, interest, questions posed, and overall style.

“We really liked a podcast called Reply all. They’re younger co-hosts, but the podcasts are highly produced. They’re journalists in the tech space, so they look at technology in society and issues like hacking, but also phishing, which is helpful for everyone to know. They’re pretty humorous as well.” Dr. David Gallagher, Associate Professor of Education at Mount Saint Mary College

With the help of School Counselor, Ms. Lakeya Stukes and Advisory teacher, Joe Tricarico, Jordan was paired with Dr. Gallagher based on his interests.

When asked what he wants to be when he grows up, Jordan responded, “I want to be a video game designer. I like working with technology. Because with games there are no rules. You can do whatever you want in the game and it’s fun - not boring at all.” Jordan is also enrolled in an App Development course with Ms. Jill through the Empire State After School Program.

When we visited, Jordan and Dr. Gallagher were recording an introduction for an upcoming podcast. “A lot of our time is spent listening back to the guest speaker series and taking show notes, which means adding links or further information that corresponds to time stamps of interesting information that comes up during the episode. It’s sort of like a map or description of the podcast, which is called show notes in podcast terms.”

The Newburgh Futures Podcast series can be found at NewburghFutures.org and should be available soon. Each episode that goes out will have a title, short description, and available links that relate to the episodes, and different times where topics are discussed, so people can jump ahead if they wish, as well as a place for comments.